Bowl games are weird animals. The stakes are relative for their participants. So often the outcome hinges on motivation. The coaching carousel can throw teams out of whack as well, too. Even so, bowl game records tend to be a fallback at this time of year for measuring conference strength. (Why everyone cares about conference strength is a topic unto itself.)
How much stock should we put into the bowl game results as a reflection of conference supremacy? Do they affect your perceptions? Should they?
Matt Yoder: I put little stock in conference bowl records, at least from a fan perspective. Where did this obsession with conference supremacy even come from? It’s not really a factor in college basketball or other sports. I don’t root for NFC South teams in the NFL Playoffs as a Saints fan because it helps my team’s reputation in some abstract way.
Maybe I just don’t get it… but if I’m an Ohio State fan, should I really be celebrating a Michigan victory in a BCS game? Shouldn’t that make my skin crawl? Does a Vanderbilt or Kentucky fan really gain extra pride in Alabama and LSU playing for the national championship? Does it matter to Boston College fans what Virginia does in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl? And really, outside the Big Ten and the SEC, do most people care about conference bowl records anyways? Were Conference USA fans rising as one when Houston beat Penn State? Was it a “huge victory for the Big XII” that Ok St beat Stanford? Ehhh…
Why should what another team does in an arbitrarily selected postseason exhibition game impact my team? As you said AK, each bowl game has such different stakes, expectations, and contexts that it’s nearly impossible to throw a blanket over everything and definitively say what it means.
Michael Felder: Personally I’m a believer in conference solidarity. To answer Matt’s question it is something I’ve seen my entire life in the NCAA tournament and in the College World Series. It is something we hear going into football season as people ask “what’s wrong with the ACC” and “can anyone close the SEC’s gap.” So that’s not a rarity or made up.
At the base level there is the fact that a rising tide buoys all ships. When more teams go BCS bowling, more teams go to bowls in general, more teams finished highly ranked there are plenty of wide reaching positives. The cash impact is simple. You don’t think Kansas, Texas Tech want that second $17 million check that would have been floated into the pot had Baylor or Kansas State gone to the Sugar over Michigan or Virginia Tech.
Another issue, when your league has that “is garbage” moniker that means your team is garbage. The only teams in the last decade to truly escape this have been USC and the Rich Rod West Virginia squads. Better league builds better teams and better teams go out and whip folks’ behind in bowls.
To be fair I’m not surprised that a Big Ten fan doesn’t see the point of it all. This year went much better but the massacre of last season’s showing didn’t exactly give anyone something to be proud about. Much like the CWS and NCAA tourney that was mentioned the bowls are your final look at a conference as a whole. How many of your teams are still standing when the dust settles. For bowls it boils down to who wins and who loses why in the NCAA and CWS it is about who goes the deepest into the tournament.
Bowl wins don’t always tell the whole story because of coaching changes and motivation but in the end Houston’s skull dragging of Penn State was a win, not just for Houston but for Conference-USA and the entire non-BCS ranks.
Kevin McGuire: Look at the Big Ten for a minute. We have seen Illinois beat a UCLA team that had a losing record, Michigan put together fewer total offensive yards than the opposing quarterback had passing yards, and a couple other mismatches that only happened because the corporate sponsors were afraid to align themselves with Penn State given the off-field poison that comes with them, thus handing the Big 12 a couple of wins they should have picked up a little easier (and may have picked up regardless if Penn State was in the mix anyway). If Michigan went up against one of the teams many feel they should have in the Sugar Bowl (Kansas State? Boise State?) how would they have looked? Are we getting a true accurate reading of the Big Ten’s place in the conference rankings this bowl season? Maybe we are, but I’m not so sure that is the case. And that’s just one example.
Add me to the camp that believes if you are a fan of one school that seeing your rival win a bigger bowl game should bother you, even if it improves your conference’s bowl record. At the end of the day, who cares?
The only thing that I tend to pay close attention to these days is how the SEC does. When you brag about how many BCS championships you have won on your media guide, and everybody regards you as the top dog in college football, you have to back it up on the field. Right now, this is the only thing I care about until somebody finds a way to knock them off the top step.
Aaron Torres: Personally, I just don’t take a ton out of these games.
As Allen said, there are entirely too many variables that go into the success or failures of one team in one game, most of which Allen touched on. They are including, but not limited to, the following: Motivation (both good and bad), coaching comings and goings, players with one foot out the door to the pros, injuries, pre-bowl transfers, kids sitting out with bad grades, locations, bizarre style matchups. You name it.
Beyond that, the biggest variable is that I don’t think you can gauge much of anything from one game, in any sport, at any level. It’s just too small a small size.
For example, I watched both the Big Ten and Pac-12 this year, and am comfortable saying that overall, top to bottom, I thought the Big Ten was better. Not by a wide margin, and maybe not in the top 2-3 teams. But from 1-12 I’d take the Big Ten.
Now, Oregon went ahead and beat Wisconsin on January 2 in Pasadena. All that means to me is that on that day, Oregon was the better team. It doesn’t make Oregon a clearly superior team (if they played 10 times, I suspect it would go 6-4 or 5-5), or the Pac-12 the superior conference.
Which brings me back to my original point: Bowl games aren’t supposed to prove some big, broader picture Not as much as be fun for the fans to travel to, and entertainment anyway. Ultimately, that’s all they really are.
As a matter of fact, I’d make the same argument today that I did two days ago: I think Oregon beating Stanford twice in the last two years in conference, with a lot more on the line, is significantly more impressive than anything they could’ve done on the field January 2. Yet all we heard in the lead-up to that game is that “Oregon can’t win big games.” Really? Ok. Because I’d say being the only team to beat Stanford the last two years is much bigger than a Rose Bowl win.
That goes for just about everyone else too.
Tom Perry: I fall between Mike and Matt.
Conference identity and rooting for teams in your conference to win bowl games can build a “we against them” mentality. When you play each other then you want to beat the hell out of each other. I root for every Big East team in their bowl games and when they play non-conference games. That’s right, I rooted for Pitt against Iowa this season.
But I also feel trying to gauge the strength of a conference on bowl victories is crazy. Normally, the Big East gets a pretty good draw. Cincinnati was the co-Big East champ and the Bearcats faced Vanderbilt. Does a seven-point win over Vanderbilt mean the Big East has some sort of claim over the SEC? Of course not.
Here’s how it works. If your league has a good record in bowl games then you tout it. If not, you ignore it.
Where I do think it works is in the BCS bowls. Virginia Tech and the ACC suck in BCS bowls. That’s a reality check you can’t overlook.
Felder: I totally agree with two things you mentioned; the idea that if your record is good you tout it and if not then you don’t bring it up and the us vs them. It’s a bit of a brotherhood situation where “we might lose to each other but we aren’t gonna lose to y’all.”
The idea that we’re all better than everyone else. Or at least want to be better.
But yeah the ACC has been terrible in BCS bowls and in a lot of bowls in general. Whenever the league can get wins it helps with perception. Perception is reality for many folks and, call me crazy but teams losing non-conference game; in September or December and January, certainly doesn’t do your league any favors.
Allen Kenney: Perception matters so much in college football, and that’s where I think the “conference pride” thing comes in for a lot of fans. For example, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Alabama got a boost in voters’ minds at the end of the year because it plays in the SEC. Powerhouses can use quality competition as a selling point for how much they rock, while the bottom-feeders can take solace in the fact that they’re getting beat by great teams.
In terms of the bowls, as an Oklahoma fan, I definitely find myself rooting for Big 12 teams for that reason. It’s not some conscious decision – it just kinda happens. I was pulling for Cal in the Holiday Bowl, but even with Texas winning there, it’s nice to have that notch in the win column on your conference’s record.
There’s definitely a disconnect in there somewhere, though, because on a micro level, I take an individual team’s bowl performance with salt grains. There are just so many external variables at play.
Ultimately, when teams from one conference keep winning bowl games, that’s hard to ignore. It can’t all be random, right? That’s why a conference’s overall record does carry some weight in comparing it against other leagues.
Torres: I think at best, we use these bowl games as further proof of our preconceived notions about these teams and conferences, much more than it actually alters or changes our perceptions.
For example, everyone decided somewhere along the way that Big Ten is big and slow, and so when they lose these bowl games, that somehow justifies our preconceived notions that the conferences teams are in fact big and slow.
Of course, if you watched on Monday, Oregon didn’t beat Wisconsin solely because of their speed (although it admittedly, it did help) as much as because they got opportunistic turnovers at the right times, and because they also got a really lucky break at the end of the game. Same with last year. TCU didn’t beat Wisconsin because of their speed in the Rose Bowl, as much as Bret Bielema gagged in his game-planning. Ohio State beat Arkansas last year in the Sugar Bowl (since redacted), in large part because of speed on defense. Wisconsin in 2012 and 2011 fit into our narrative so we discuss them. Ohio State doesn’t, so we don’t.
To further that point, let’s look at the ACC vs. the Big East. Watch every single Saturday, and we are all pretty much in agreement that the ACC is the superior conference; some would say by a significant margin. Of course since 2005 (the dawn of the Big East and ACC as they NOW stand), the Big East is 3-3 in BCS bowl games, and the ACC is 1-5 (1-6 if you include Virginia Tech last night).
Yet no one (except those in the Big East maybe) are sitting here banging the drum and saying that the Big East Conference is better. Why? Well one, because nobody cares about Big East football. But two, because the bowls don’t justify what their eyes are already telling them.
It’s like the old saying: “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
That’s bowl perception, in my opinion
That’s our take. Now tell us what you think!
